Climate Catastrophe: A Superstorm for Global Warming Research

Climate Catastrophe:A Superstorm for Global Warming Research

Climate models involve some of the most demanding computations of any simulations, and only a handful of institutes worldwide have the necessary supercomputers. The computers must run at full capacity for months to work their way through the jungle of data produced by coupled differential equations.

All of this is much too complicated for politicians, who aren't terribly interested in the details. They have little use for radiation budgets and ocean-atmosphere circulation models. Instead, they prefer simple targets.

For this reason a group of German scientists, yielding to political pressure, invented an easily digestible message in the mid-1990s: the two-degree target. To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.

It was a pretty audacious estimate. Nevertheless, the powers-that-be finally had a tangible number to work with. An amazing success story was about to begin.

'Clearly a Political Goal'

Rarely has a scientific idea had such a strong impact on world politics. Most countries have now recognized the two-degree target. If the two-degree limit were exceeded, German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen announced ahead of the failed Copenhagen summit, "life on our planet, as we know it today, would no longer be possible."

But this is scientific nonsense. "Two degrees is not a magical limit -- it's clearly a political goal," says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant. The reality, of course, is much more complicated."

Schellnhuber ought to know. He is the father of the two-degree target.

"Yes, I plead guilty," he says, smiling. The idea didn't hurt his career. In fact, it made him Germany's most influential climatologist. Schellnhuber, a theoretical physicist, became Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief scientific adviser -- a position any researcher would envy.

Rule of Thumb

The story of the two-degree target began in the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU). Administration politicians had asked the council for climate protection guidelines, and the scientists under Schellnhuber's leadership came up with a strikingly simple idea. "We looked at the history of the climate since the rise of homo sapiens," Schellnhuber recalls. "This showed us that average global temperatures in the last 130,000 years were no more than two degrees higher than before the beginning of the industrial revolution. To be on the safe side, we came up with a rule of thumb stating that it would be better not to depart from this field of experience in human evolution. Otherwise we would be treading on terra incognita."

As tempting as it sounds, on closer inspection this approach proves to be nothing but a sleight of hand. That's because humans are children of an ice age. For many thousands of years, they struggled to survive in a climate that was as least four degrees colder than it is today, and at times even more than eight degrees colder.

This means that, on balance, mankind has already survived far more severe temperature fluctuations than two degrees. And the cold periods were always the worst periods. Besides, modern civilizations have far more technical means of adapting to climate change than earlier societies had.

Since the first rough estimate was made, many other good reasons have emerged to support the two-degree target, says Schellnhuber. At the same time, however, the constant appearance of new studies has also made the picture significantly more complex.

Coral reefs, for example, could already be doomed if the oceans heat up by 1.5 degrees Celsius. On the other hand, crop yields in agriculture are likely to rise at temperature increases of up to 2.5 degrees Celsius -- good news for the world's growing population.

Completely Speculative

But what good are all the predictions? It's difficult enough to calculate exactly how far temperatures will rise in the coming decades. It becomes completely speculative to predict in detail how warming temperatures will benefit tourism or harm biodiversity.

"Of course, the conclusions of climate impact research are not as reliable as we'd like them to be," Schellnhuber admits. "But we can't exactly drop 10,000 studies from Science and Nature on our political leaders' desks. That would obviously be too much for them. Instead we, as experts, must attempt to condense the large number of analyses into plausible scenarios."

Critics say that the climate impact researchers have gone too far with their brand of political advice. "The two-degree target has little to do with serious science," says Hans von Storch. Many of his fellow scientists, he adds, now see themselves too much as political activists who want to get something done. This, in turn, harms the credibility of science as a whole, he adds, and it is also a more deep-seated cause of the Climategate affair and the sloppy work on the IPCC report.

"Unfortunately, some of my colleagues behave like pastors, who present their results in precisely such a way that they'll fit to their sermons," says Storch. "It's certainly no coincidence that all the mistakes that became public always tended in the direction of exaggeration and alarmism."

'Completely Absurd'

Such suspicions irritate PIK Director Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, particularly when they are directed against him or his institute. Schellnhuber, a native of Bavaria, normally speaks quietly and diplomatically, but he raises his voice when discussing the accusations. He says that he is far from being an environmental activist or someone who acts purely for political reasons.

"That's completely absurd!" he says heatedly. "I don't participate in protest marches, I'm not a member of the Green Party, I like to eat meat and I drive a BMW. And I didn't study physics to become a climatologist, either."

But no, he adds, he happens to be someone who has acquired inside knowledge about a looming disaster, knowledge that he cannot keep to himself. "If I'm a passenger on a ship and I see, through my binoculars, that we're headed for an iceberg," says Schellnhuber, "I have to warn the captain immediately."

But exactly how far away is that iceberg? How much time is left to steer the ship onto an alternate course? And how great is the risk of collision? These are key questions. In reality, it isn't about stopping a luxury ocean liner, but about the massive effort that is required to end the age of oil and coal as quickly as possible.

Time to React

"We climatologists can only describe possible futures," Storch points out. "It's also possible that things will be completely different."

Storch, a native of northern Germany and one of the pioneers of climate modeling, recommends a more dispassionate approach. He grew up on the North Sea island of Föhr, where he experienced storm tides at first hand. He learned that humans are tough and adaptable beings.

"Fearmongering is the wrong way to go about it," says Storch. "Climate change isn't going to happen overnight. We still have enough time to react."

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I constantly point out, and people constantly ignore, that, in the absence of countervailing forces, if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up. This is just basic [...]

I constantly point out, and people constantly ignore, that, in the absence of countervailing forces, if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up. This is just basic physics, and is as certain as the Law of Gravity.
Of course there are possible mitigating factors, such as changes in cloud cover and the injection of certain types of dust into the atmosphere; but these factors are, as yet, far more problematical than the raw fact of global warming. The Earth has already become warmer and sea levels have already risen. These facts are clearly visible in what is happening to low island nations and to the arctic regions.
The Spiegel article is calmer and more reasonable than those in many other popular journals, but I would fault it for not mentioning that changes in the arctic must necessarily increase heat absorption in those regions, and for not mentioning the release of greenhouse gases as polar permafrost melts.
Also, it is important to point out that it is not relevant that humans and other life forms survived even greater changes in climate in the past. Those changes almost always were very slow, occurring over many hundreds and thousands of years. There was time to adjust. The global warming which we are creating will, from the point of view of Earth history, occur in the blink of an eye. The effects on life on the planet will be incalculable and much more serious than those that occurred in the past.
We must tune out the noise created by zealots, self-interested moneyed interests, and political and religious ideologies. For once in the life of the human species, let us be careful and rational.

2. Climate catastrophe?

StSwithin 04/01/2010

An excellent article which presented a balanced view of the current situation. One fact, which is often ignored, is that sceptics like McIntyre actually believe that global warming is taking place. They just do not believe all the [...]

An excellent article which presented a balanced view of the current situation. One fact, which is often ignored, is that sceptics like McIntyre actually believe that global warming is taking place. They just do not believe all the forecasts of tipping points and imminent catastrophe.
One of the weaknesses of the IPCC stance is that they only present selected data. When you look at longer term data it is clear that claims such as "the rate of temperature rise is accelerating" are just not true. Temperature rose just as fast from 1910 to 1945 as they did at the end of the last century.
For a balanced review of the data see: www.climatedata.info

3.

vespasian678 04/03/2010

I am an archaeologist who works with Holocene climate records on a regular basis (part of our project involves the palaeoecology of our region). The statement above is incorrect. The Younger Dryas, for instance, saw abrupt [...]

Zitat von plotinusI constantly point out, and people constantly ignore, that, in the absence of countervailing forces, if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up. This is just basic physics, and is as certain as the Law of Gravity.
Of course there are possible mitigating factors, such as changes in cloud cover and the injection of certain types of dust into the atmosphere; but these factors are, as yet, far more problematical than the raw fact of global warming. The Earth has already become warmer and sea levels have already risen. These facts are clearly visible in what is happening to low island nations and to the arctic regions.
The Spiegel article is calmer and more reasonable than those in many other popular journals, but I would fault it for not mentioning that changes in the arctic must necessarily increase heat absorption in those regions, and for not mentioning the release of greenhouse gases as polar permafrost melts.
Also, it is important to point out that it is not relevant that humans and other life forms survived even greater changes in climate in the past. Those changes almost always were very slow, occurring over many hundreds and thousands of years. There was time to adjust. The global warming which we are creating will, from the point of view of Earth history, occur in the blink of an eye. The effects on life on the planet will be incalculable and much more serious than those that occurred in the past.
We must tune out the noise created by zealots, self-interested moneyed interests, and political and religious ideologies. For once in the life of the human species, let us be careful and rational.

I am an archaeologist who works with Holocene climate records on a regular basis (part of our project involves the palaeoecology of our region). The statement above is incorrect. The Younger Dryas, for instance, saw abrupt changes of perhaps 5 degrees Celsius in the mid-latitudes and 10 degrees in high latitudes over the course of a few decades (at most; cf. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/arch/examples.shtml). Mid-latitude precipitation also changed rapidly and dramatically, at least in Europe (contrary to popular belief, as temperatures warm it tends to get wetter, at least on a large scale - there may of course be regions of decreasing precipitation).
Although I think energy policy should be managed as if global warming was imminent (more nuclear and other non-CO2 emitting generation, incentives for conservation, internalising the externality of CO2 emissions through taxation, etc. - call it the "Pascal's Wager" approach to AGW) It seems to me that the "skeptics" in this debate hardly have a monopoly on "zealots, self-interested moneyed interests, and political and religious ideologies".

4. An excellent article which presented a balanced view?

jensmacha 04/03/2010

Obviously,there are other opinions out there! First of all: Jones was rehabilitated. Secondly there seems to be a certain climate bashing around. I recommend:
[...]

Obviously,there are other opinions out there! First of all: Jones was rehabilitated. Secondly there seems to be a certain climate bashing around. I recommend:
http://www.wissenslogs.de/wblogs/blog/klimalounge/medien-check/2010-04-01/klimaforscher-bashing-beim-spiegel
http://blogs.ajc.com/kyle-wingfield/2010/04/02/climate-er-change-a-papers-sober-look-at-the-science/

5. CO2 GH effect is logarithmic, no linear

tomfp 04/03/2010

[quote=plotinus;108476]...if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up.
False. The GH effect of CO2 is logarithmic, not linear. At some point, therefore, rises in [...]

Zitat von plotinusI constantly point out, and people constantly ignore, that, in the absence of countervailing forces, if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up. This is just basic physics, and is as certain as the Law of Gravity.
Of course there are possible mitigating factors, such as changes in cloud cover and the injection of certain types of dust into the atmosphere; but these factors are, as yet, far more problematical than the raw fact of global warming. The Earth has already become warmer and sea levels have already risen. These facts are clearly visible in what is happening to low island nations and to the arctic regions.
The Spiegel article is calmer and more reasonable than those in many other popular journals, but I would fault it for not mentioning that changes in the arctic must necessarily increase heat absorption in those regions, and for not mentioning the release of greenhouse gases as polar permafrost melts.
Also, it is important to point out that it is not relevant that humans and other life forms survived even greater changes in climate in the past. Those changes almost always were very slow, occurring over many hundreds and thousands of years. There was time to adjust. The global warming which we are creating will, from the point of view of Earth history, occur in the blink of an eye. The effects on life on the planet will be incalculable and much more serious than those that occurred in the past.
We must tune out the noise created by zealots, self-interested moneyed interests, and political and religious ideologies. For once in the life of the human species, let us be careful and rational.

[quote=plotinus;108476]...if you pour carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the atmosphere _*must*_ warm up.
False. The GH effect of CO2 is logarithmic, not linear. At some point, therefore, rises in concentration MUST cease to produce a significant rise in GH effect. Much reputable opinion holds that at present concentrations it is already at that stage.
You can find a good discussion of this flaw in the "basic science" of AGW alarmism here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/